|
Edited on Wed Oct-06-04 09:59 AM by GoreN4
Leo Strauss 1899-1973:
Philosophical Father of the Neoconservatives
"Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed…Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united - and they can only be united against other people."
“those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right - the right of the superior to rule over the inferior…The people are told what they need to know and no more."
- Dr. Leo Strauss, thoughts on government and the wise elites need for secrecy, Natural Right and History and Persecution and the Art of Writing
"Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them. . . . Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by everyone, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances..."
-Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513
"In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’ This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still…"
- Michael A. Ledeen, leading neoconservative at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), advisor to President Bush’s political stragist, Karl Rove, as quoted in his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago, 1999
It is widely acknowledged the Bush administration was not particularly honest about the reasons it gave to the public for the invasion of Iraq. Leading Neoconservative commentator Michael Ledeen has often argued the legitimacy of Machiavelli’s teaching that leaders must unabashedly engage in deception, even if the leaders commit “evil” acts in order to accomplish their goals. Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense, acknowledged the “intelligence” used to justify the war was always “murky” and that the main rationale for the Iraq war, “disarming” Saddam of a supposed reconstituted WMD program, was in essence a “bureaucratic” decison.
His neoconservative colleague, Richard Perle also admitted the war was in violation of International Law, but nonetheless it was the “right thing” to do. This philosophy of governance openly advocates an “end justifies the means” mentality, including deception, violence, and the abrogation of International Law. Many Americans have difficulty believing the Bush administration purposely engaged in a campaign of diversion and deception to convince the public that an invasion of Iraq was urgent and necessary. While these facts are disconcerting, they are not surprising given the self-proclaimed philosophical underpinning of neoconservative ideology.
####
Build-up to Gulf War II:
Saddam Hussein and Weapons of Mass Destruction
“The sanctions exist ... for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. ... And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”
- Secretary Of State Colin Powell, February 24, 2001
“Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.”
- Secretary Of State Colin Powell, February 5, 2003
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002
“Intelligence leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal lethal weapons.”
- President George W. Bush, March 17, 2003
“We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons…. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.”
- Prime Minister Tony Blair, March 18, 2003
Goering: "Why of course, the people don't want war...That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
Goering: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
- Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist, who interviewed and recorded the observations of Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshal and Luftwaffe chief, during the Nuremberg War Criminal trials, April 18, 1946
Throughout modern history, the propaganda tactics for promoting war as bluntly revealed by an unrepentant Hermann Goering are just as effective today as they were during the 20th century. When the press becomes subservient to the desires of political leaders, even modern democracies such as the U.S. and U.K. are not immune to the historical effectiveness of leaders who use propaganda to bring a frightful population "to the bidding of the leaders.”
Regarding Iraq, the effective utilization of propaganda techniques by the Bush administration was especially critical given their unique task of justifying the United States first ever “preventative war." The nefarious mechanisms behind these transparent propaganda methods will be analyzed in this chapter. However, well before this campaign, it is clear that invading Iraq was a priority from the beginning.
Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill recalled the during the very first National Security of the Bush administration meeting that toppling Saddam Hussein was the focus of the administration. The book, The Price of Loyalty, reveals that toppling Saddam Hussein at the top of the national security agenda just 10 days after George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President, a full even eight months before the September 11th terrorists attacks.
This insistence on establishing U.S. military bases and negating foreign oil exploration contracts in Iraq is not surprising given the goals articulated by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) think tank. Moreover, the technical data showing the imminence of global Peak Oil was certainly available to the CIA analysts, and by extension the top U.S. policy-makers.
From the Roman Empire to today, people have long suffered when political leaders espouse a philosophy that political order is stable only if the people are united by an external threat. The Straussian philosophy of governance requires the people to be united under fear and hatred. In order to achieve such goals a propaganda campaign to instill fear would need to be launched. In essence, the justification for invading Iraq was a coordinated and transparent pack of fabrications and deceptions - designed to create the requisite societal fear.
The goal of course was apparently to create a broad “external threat” – even if such a threat did not exist. Mr. Luti and members of the OSP vigorously pursued this challenge during the autumn of 2002, and succeeded brilliantly. To date, no professional intelligence analysts in the CIA, DIA, MI5 or MI6 have provided credible evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda or to the September 11th attack. Much of the disinformation prorogated by these individuals was discernibly deceptive before the war, and now the evidence of a conspiracy is simply irrefutable.
In essence, the main rationales for the Iraq war were developed by a rather unprecedented U.S. government conspiracy perpetrated by a relatively small number of radical neoconservatives in the “Iraqi Intelligence cell,” the OSP, as well of as few Iraqi exiles in the INC. In addition, this propaganda campaign was facilitated by far right news sources such as The Weekly Standard, National Review, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News.
Convincing the Americans people of the need for a preemptive invasion of Iraq required the emergence of an external threat as required by Straussian ideology. The manufacturing of an effective threat appears to have involved numerous references to the terms “smoking gun” and "mushroom cloud.” Repeatedly over and over again these images were stated by U.S. government officials. After all, according to Strauss and neoconservative ideology the masses could only “be inspired to rise above their brutish existence only by fear of impending death or catastrophe.”
In view of the Straussian philosophy of governance,the operations of the OSP and Douglas Feith’s intelligence “cell” were not “intelligence failures” at all, but a remarkable success in uniting the “vulgar masses” with “fear of impending death or catastrophe.”
Straussian Necessity of an External Threat: Mushroom Clouds to Inspire the Vulgar Masses
"Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon we cannot gauge."
-Vice President Cheney, August 26, 2002
“The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons, but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, September 8, 2002
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof...the smoking gun.... that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
- President George W. Bush, October 7, 2002
An Iraqi nuclear weapon might bring "the sight of the first mushroom cloud on one of the major population centers on this planet."
- General Tommy Franks, November 12, 2002
"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
- Vice President Cheney, March 16, 2003
“I don’t believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.”
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, May 14, 2003
"Yeah, I did misspeak .... We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon."
- Vice President Cheney, September 14, 2003
The last quote is quite an understatement considering that Vice President Cheney was the instrumental government official to first suggest that Saddam Hussein was acquiring nuclear weapons. The seven month period between August of 2002 to just three days before the war was a remarkably era in which senior members of the Executive Brach and one of the top U.S. military commanders appeared to have engaged in a coordinated attempt to promulgate massive societal fear. The repeatedly references to “reconstituted nuclear weapons” and visions of “mushroom clouds” was a very effective fear tactic to fill the imagination of Americans with “fear of impending death or catastrophe.”
Nonetheless, it one can overcome the thought-paralyzing effects of this type of fear invoking propaganda and critically examine the publicly available facts, it was always doubtful that Saddam could have reconstituted an undetected nuclear weapons program under the U.N. sanctions. Likewise, Saddam was not likely to give any WMD weapons to Islamic terrorists. Saddam was a survivor, not a martyr.
Despite inherit logical contradictions of an unprovoked WMD attack by the Iraqi government, in August 2002 Vice President Cheney first introduced the notion that Saddam Hussein would acquire nuclear weapons “fairly soon.”
Not coincidentally, on the one-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Condoleezza Rice famously remarked the first “smoking gun” could be a “mushroom cloud.” Introducing the terrifying image of a mushroom cloud upon the America psyche when our emotions were heightened by the first year anniversary of 9/11 was a highly effective method for instilling generalized fear. Indeed, a month later President Bush reiterated that the “final proof” of Saddam’s nuclear program could be a “mushroom cloud.”
The coup de grace to “inspire” the American people that an imminent “external threat” existed from a nuclear armed Saddam was provided by General Tommy Franks and Donald Rumsfeld. In November 2002 Franks warned that inaction might produce the “first mushroom cloud on one of the major population centers on this planet.” days later on November 14th Donald Rumsfeld stated: “Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qa'ida,” This extraordinary, fear-inspiring propaganda campaign vividly illustrates the power welded by a few government officials who can easily bring the people “to the bidding of the leaders.”
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(296 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
